A bucket full of Magnets

You can think of water as a bucket full of magnets. Water is a molecule made from the atoms Oxygen and Hydrogen. One Oxygen atom sticks to two Hydrogen atoms because they can share electrons.

But… one thing we didn’t mention in the molecules section is that they do not really share equally. The shared electrons hang out with the Oxygen molecule more that they do the Hydrogen molecules. This means that one side of the water molecule will be more positively charged and the other side will be more negatively charged just like a magnet.

Electrons have a negative (-) charge and

protons in the nucleus have a positive (+) charge.

If the electrons spend more time on one side of the molecule (in this case the bottom) then the bottom side has a negative (-) charge.

With the nucleus (containing the protons) having a positive (+) charge, the side without many electrons (the top in this case) has an overall positive charge.

So, when you run your hand through water, you are temporarily breaking apart these little magnetic bonds between the water molecules.

Have you ever noticed how drips of water stick together? Look at a car after it rains… the water is in little bumps all over the car. The water is more attracted to itself than the surface of the car. It pulls together and even pushes up a little against the gravity pushing down on it.

Here is an example animation from Youtube… The little lighting bolt flashes just represent the attraction between the positive and negative sides of the water molecules.